


Eddie Kaspbrak, Office Uncle Extraordinaire

by kyaticlikestea



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Amputee Eddie Kaspbrak, But also, Comedian Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak is a Little Shit, Eddie Kaspbrak is not a boomer, Famous Richie Tozier, M/M, Office Party, POV Outsider, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Smart Richie Tozier, Soft Eddie Kaspbrak, bitch bastard eddie kaspbrak, but for a good cause, he's Generation X, there's a difference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:13:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24627613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyaticlikestea/pseuds/kyaticlikestea
Summary: Eddie has a surprising amount of muscle definition going on in the forearm region. Jamie has witnessed, on four separate occasions, someone do a double take at Eddie’s forearm. Karen from HR still bears the nickname ‘Mugbreaker’ after Eddie turned the corner near her office, coming face to face with her just as he rubbed a hand through the hair at the nape of his neck, exposing the wiry flex of muscle between wrist and elbow, and Karen famously dropped a cup of coffee all over the floor. Ergo, either Eddie goes to the gym, or he’s on steroids.Eddie is the kind of man who keeps a makeshift itemised medicine cabinet in his third desk drawer, with a padlock on the handle, the key for which he keeps in the inside pocket of his suit jacket, and who administers a library style check-out system of medication whenever anyone asks for a Paracetamol.Eddie is probably not on steroids.Eddie's coworker finally convinces him to bring his elusive spouse to an office party. It goes about as well as you might expect, which is to say spectacularly.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 316
Kudos: 1885
Collections: ||My favorite fics||





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Tw: mentions of ableism, implied misgendering

Jamie knows very little indeed about Eddie Kaspbrak. Despite having worked alongside him for nearly four years now, Jamie’s pretty sure that he knows more about complexometric indicators, after spending one particularly fruitful lunchbreak refreshing the Random Article function on Wikipedia, than he knows about Eddie Kaspbrak. In fact, if someone were to hold him at gunpoint and order him to explain the extent of what he knows about his elusive coworker, he thinks he could probably run through it all on the fingers of one hand, which makes him feel a little sad, actually. 

It’s not that he doesn’t want to know more, after all. Far from it. Eddie seems cool enough, for a dude who has seven bottles of hand sanitiser on his desk, which Tadeo in Sales calls his minibar. 

Jamie has met Tadeo in Sales precisely twice, and he knows that Tadeo has a wife named Elke, who’s Dutch and has a thing about seasonal vegetables, and when they visited Tadeo’s parents in Chile last year, Elke discovered mayonnaise and hasn’t looked back since. Tadeo’s birthday is November 9th, making him a Scorpio, and Tadeo doesn’t really believe in all that Astrology stuff, but Elke is a Cancer and they’re super compatible, so maybe there’s something to it after all.

Jamie has shared an office space with Eddie Kaspbrak since the final weeks of the Obama presidency, and he still doesn’t know Eddie’s birthday. 

It’s just that Eddie is an enigma wrapped in a riddle, tied with a bow of mystery. A cryptogram in human form. A one-man sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.

Jamie knows, for example, that Eddie probably goes to the gym. He knows this because Eddie likes to roll his shirtsleeve up to his elbow in the afternoon, and even Jamie, who’s very happy with Nishat, thank you, can admit that Eddie has a surprising amount of muscle definition going on in the forearm region. Jamie has witnessed, on four separate occasions, someone do a double take at Eddie’s forearm. Karen from HR still bears the nickname ‘Mugbreaker’ after Eddie turned the corner near her office, coming face to face with her just as he rubbed a hand through the hair at the nape of his neck, exposing the wiry flex of muscle between wrist and elbow, and Karen famously dropped a cup of coffee all over the floor. 

Ergo, either Eddie goes to the gym, or he’s on steroids. 

Eddie is the kind of man who keeps a makeshift itemised medicine cabinet in his third desk drawer, with a padlock on the handle, the key for which he keeps in the inside pocket of his suit jacket, and who administers a library style check-out system of medication whenever anyone asks for a Paracetamol.

Eddie is probably not on steroids.

Jamie knows that Eddie is married, because he wears a wedding ring on his fourth finger, and sometimes, when Eddie clearly thinks no-one is around, Jamie catches him texting someone and beaming like he’s won the lottery twice. Jamie does not know the name or indeed the gender of Eddie’s spouse; the only framed photograph on Eddie’s desk is, somewhat bizarrely, a black and white photograph of a bowl of spaghetti, with the words ‘our firstborn son’ scrawled across it in awful penmanship, and a signature that looks suspiciously like an autograph. 

Eddie’s computer desktop background is a photograph of the Swiss Alps. Jamie does not know if Eddie has ever been to the Swiss Alps. He’s never spoken about it if he has. 

Jamie knows better than to assume that Eddie has a wife or a husband, because Jamie is an enlightened millennial who took a Gender Studies class at college entirely of his own volition, and he also knows better than to ask Eddie about his spouse, because he remembers the look on Eddie’s face when Thandi in Accounting asked him how his wife was doing, and he’s pretty sure that Thandi still has night terrors about it. 

He also knows that Eddie has, at the very least, one friend or family member outside of work, and that friend or family member has very poor taste in tie. He knows this because Eddie came to work a few weeks ago wearing a white shirt with a new tie in a sort of eggplant colour, with a gold and green plaid pattern. It was, as Jamie’s mother might have said, a bold choice. 

“Nice tie,” Jamie had said to Eddie, trying to make conversation at the photocopier. 

Eddie, coffee in hand, had looked down at his own tie, as though he’d forgotten what he was wearing, and shrugged.

“Not one I’d pick myself,” he’d replied, and that had been that. 

Jamie also knows that Eddie Kaspbrak does not have a left arm. Jamie knows this because he has eyes, and despite being the sort of person who once took over a week to notice that Nishat had shaved half their head, even Jamie can’t miss the fact that Eddie pins the left arm of his shirt and suit jacket up around the residual limb. 

Eddie never wears a short-sleeved shirt, even though Jamie’s pretty sure it would be a lot easier than having to pin the long sleeve up, because Eddie has a thing about the lines of a suit. 

Jamie also knows that Eddie has a very fancy prosthetic that he never uses. The last time Jamie saw the prosthetic, he was in Eddie’s office, asking him for the details on the Vortex Solutions file so that he could set the metadata up properly, and he noticed that Eddie had procured an oddly small new hatstand, propped up against the wall in the far corner of the office, all chrome and odd joints with a deep red beanie pulled over the top.

“Nice hatstand,” Jamie said, nodding at the hatstand.

“Thanks,” Eddie said. “It’s my arm.” 

Jamie does not know how Eddie lost his actual arm, and he doesn’t want to know, because that’s incredibly personal information and Jamie, who was not raised in a barn, thank you very much, knows that there are certain things you just don’t ask people. 

“What’s that disgusting boil on your face, and how did you muster up the courage to come to work today?” is one of them. “How did you lose your left arm?” is another.

Brad from Marketing once asked Eddie how he lost his arm while the two of them were standing in line for the coffee machine at 7.30 in the morning. Eddie had turned a shade of red hitherto unseen outside of a paint warehouse, and replied that he’d left it inside Brad’s mom’s asshole. 

Brad had reported it to Karen in HR, Eddie had reported Brad’s question right back, and, torn between a lawsuit for ableism or a lawsuit for a crude joke about Brad’s mother, Karen had gently advised Brad to be more sensitive of his differently abled colleagues in the workplace. 

Brad had then sent an email to a friend in Sales, complaining about Mugbreaker’s bias because she wanted to fuck Eddie’s forearm vein, and had mistakenly copied in everyone in the entire building. Jamie had sent back a gif of a panda rolling down a hill and landing in a garbage can. Eddie had not replied to the email thread. Brad had packed up his belongings a week later. 

When Jamie went into Eddie’s office the day of Brad’s departure to fetch the paperwork on Essensecurity, the hat was no longer pulled over Eddie’s prosthetic arm in the corner, and the middle finger of the hand was extended in a surreptitious salute.

Probably an accident, thought Jamie.

He also knows that, according to Susan Cooper, who sits three cubicles down and eats a single boiled egg for lunch every day, Eddie Kaspbrak looks exactly like the kind of man who knows his way around a clitoris. Although on balance, Jamie thinks, that probably says more about Susan than it does about Eddie.

All of which is to say that Jamie is really at a point where he’d pretty much do anything just to find out Eddie Kaspbrak’s middle name, because there comes a point at which it’s honestly just super awkward to work with someone for four years and never exchange anything beyond meaningless pleasantries at the coffee machine. 

Because here’s the thing: Jamie totally wants to be Eddie’s friend. Sure, he’s, like, fifteen years older than Jamie, and if he isn’t frowning then he’s muttering something darkly under his breath, and he drinks his coffee completely black, which points to something being deeply amiss with his psyche, but there’s something else, too; something about him that shows through the edifice occasionally, something wry and unexpected that makes Jamie think, _yes, you’re interesting, let’s be best buddies_. 

It shows in the weird framed photo of spaghetti on Eddie’s desk, and the way he uses his prosthetic arm as a hatstand, and the fact that Susan Cooper once walked in on him doing yoga on the floor of his office, and it shows, too, in all the times Jamie has watched Eddie wipe tears of laughter from his eyes after reading a text, and the fact that Jamie is pretty sure he owns at least three Beverly Marsh suits, two of which he definitely got before they were actually available to buy. 

So when the email lands in his inbox at lunchtime on Friday, resplendent with Karen’s laissez-faire attitude towards capitalisation, he can practically feel the cogs in his brain start to whir. This is what he’s been waiting for. His golden ticket. A one way trip to Best Friendsville.

> **From** : Karen Marquez
> 
> **To** : all
> 
> **Subject** : There will Be a party on Wednesday 4th march. 
> 
> Hello everyone,
> 
> As you may or may not know Andrei is leaving us next month to go onto pastures new at Gold & Brown Solutions. This is of course a very sad Loss for us all as a company and we will all miss you Andrei! Especially the excellent egg salad you bring in for us every Monday. Your Wife’s cooking talents will be missed almost as much as you!
> 
> To mark Andrei’s excellent new job we will be celebrating his golden opportunity the evening of **Wednesday 4th march** with a party to be held at Studio 52 on Lexington avenue at 7.30PM. All are welcome to Attend and you are also welcome to bring a plus one provided you email me first so I can make sure I know the right Numbers of attendees.
> 
> Please RSVP to this email and let me know if you will be bringing Someone by 12pm on **Monday 2nd march**.
> 
> Thank you all and once again good luck Andrei!
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> Karen Marquez
> 
> PS please remember that if someone has put their name on the tupperware in the Fridge then it is probably their lunch

Screw Andrei’s golden opportunity, thinks Jamie, gleefully marking the email as ‘important’ and closing the tab. This is _his_ golden opportunity to finally get to know Eddie Kaspbrak.

He has no idea how he’s going to play this, but by God, he’s playing to win.

* * *

When he walks into the office kitchen to grab a necessary caffeine hit before starting on Susan Cooper’s truly eldritch filing system, Eddie is already there, getting himself one of his disgusting black coffees. The office coffee machine is an unwieldy beast, with about 700 buttons that all profess to have different functions, and Jamie’s fairly certain that only Eddie can use it. Which makes sense, seeing as it might as well be Eddie’s personal coffee machine. As Jamie remembers it, Eddie had made some vague allusions to it being relatively easy to use one-handed, and Corporate, who were still stinging from the Brad Incident, had almost immediately put in an order for one. Jamie looked it up online the day it came. It costs nearly $8,000.

Jamie’s pretty sure that Eddie was bullshitting about it being easy to use under any circumstances whatsoever, but it does make a pretty neat Americano.

He sidles up to Eddie, who then realises that he’s there, and fixes him with a tight smile.

“I’ll be done in a minute,” says Eddie. “Want me to get you anything?”

“Uh, no, that’s OK,” says Jamie. “I can… I can use the machine.”

He absolutely can’t, but Eddie doesn’t need to know that.

Eddie snorts. “That makes just two of us, then. I think it made Karen cry the other week.”

Jamie distinctly recalls that Eddie also once made Karen cry, after she signed off an email with a ‘Best’ and he responded with a ‘Regards’, but he doesn’t say anything.

“Cool,” says Jamie, feeling anything but. “Cool, cool. Hey, uh. Speaking of Karen,” he continues, grateful for the natural segue, “did you get the email? About the party?”

“I did,” affirms Eddie, one eyebrow raised in that way that Jamie definitely hasn’t practised, unsuccessfully, in the mirror. “I think she copied in everyone. Probably invited the janitors, too.”

“Do the janitors even have company email accounts?” Jamie wisecracks.

Eddie shrugs, unsmiling. “They should. Might help them unionise.”

Jamie says a quick prayer for his joke, and looks briefly past Eddie’s left shoulder and out of the floor-to-ceiling window behind him. The city of New York spreads out, vast and silver and stinking, like a topographical map of capitalism itself. Jamie wonders if anyone out there knows any more about Eddie Kaspbrak than him. He thinks, for one brief second, that they probably all do.

Still. He presses on. He’s on a mission, after all.

“So, the party,” he continues. “Looks like they’ve roped Olwen and Theo into planning it, and Olwen might be approaching 60, but I don’t think Theo’s much older than 12, so their average age is a decent 35 or so. Bodes well for it not being the crapshow it was last year.” He mentally applauds himself on not swearing—he doesn’t know what Eddie’s opinion on foul language is, after all, and he doesn’t want to ruin their fledgling bond—and leans forward in what he hopes is a friendly rather than conspiratorial manner. “I heard rumours of cake. I’m hoping for chocolate.”

Eddie takes a sip of coffee. “I’m gluten intolerant,” he says, swallowing.

Jamie briefly imagines a spreadsheet with two columns labelled ‘Personal Facts About Eddie: Best Friends Mission’ and ‘Making a Dick of Myself In Front of My Future Bestie’, and puts a checkmark in both columns.

“So’s Derren in Accounts,” says Jamie, thinking on his feet. “Maybe he’ll bring, like, flapjacks or something.”

Eddie frowns minutely. “Sounds good,” he says, after a beat, and makes to leave. 

Jamie resists the urge to grab him by the shoulder. “Are you coming?” he asks, feeling the words spill off his tongue like lemmings leaping from a cliff to their deaths into a quagmire of humiliation. He’s aware that he may be coming off a little desperate, and he tries to reign it in, leaning in a very casual manner against the counter. He’s pretty sure his elbow is resting in a pool of spilt orange juice, but what Eddie doesn’t know can’t be used as blackmail material later. “I mean, I was kind of in two minds about going, because I never actually spoke to Andrei or anything, but, you know, a party’s a party, right?”

“Sure is,” says Eddie. “In the very literal sense that a party is a party.” He raises his coffee in a salute. “I’m just gonna head—”

“I’m definitely going,” says Jamie, totally spitballing now, no more aware of whatever’s about to come out of his mouth than Eddie is, and absolutely hating every second, but knowing that this is it; this is his chance to finally _socialise_ with Eddie Kaspbrak, the only interesting person in the entire office, and he’s not letting go of it that easily. “Probably going to try and convince Nishat to go, too. I told you about them before, right?”

Frowning slightly, Eddie lowers his coffee and nods. “You think they’ll come?”

And that’s one other thing Jamie knows about Eddie, now he comes to think of it. Eddie’s never asked Jamie about his boyfriend or his girlfriend. He’s never frowned at the pronouns or asked him why he’s being cagey about it, even though he isn’t. Which, if Jamie thinks about it, is actually pretty progressive for someone who otherwise embodies such stellar boomer energy.

“What, you want to meet them?” asks Jamie.

Eddie doesn’t answer, just maintains an unnerving level of eye contact and takes a sip of coffee, even though it’s fresh from the machine and must be absolutely scalding, and Jamie cringes. 

“I don’t know if they’ll come,” says Jamie, honestly. He shrugs. “They’re an artist, and everyone here is, uh, not. I’m not sure how much they’d have in common with anyone. I don’t want them to come and just be, like, bored out of their skull. You know?”

Eddie nods, slowly. He takes a long sip of his coffee, considering something, and Jamie digs his fingernails into the palm of his left hand. He dare not hope that Eddie is about to share something personal.

This is Eddie Kaspbrak. The word ‘personal’ is not in his dictionary. 

“My husband—” Eddie pauses, clearly aware that he’s just given something away that he didn’t mean to, and Jamie mentally runs around the entire office, doing a victory dance. He focuses all of his energy on not reacting at all. Eddie has a husband. Not a spouse. A _husband_. That’s new information. Another fact to add to his mental spreadsheet. Eddie inhales sharply, breathes out slowly. “He probably wouldn’t have much in common with anyone else, either.” He pauses. “What am I saying? He definitely doesn’t. He has more in common with, like, wildebeest.”

Eddie taps the fingernail of his index finger along the handle of his coffee cup arrhythmically, and Jamie stands up straighter, stops leaning against the counter. They’re getting somewhere. Eddie just shared something with Jamie. Now, Jamie realises, it’s his turn. This is how you make friends, after all. You share things. Burdens and secrets and coffee cups, after you rinse them out. 

“I think that Nishat secretly hates the entire thing,” he confesses. “The whole corporate shtick. Not in, uh, an elitist way. Like, I don’t think that they see themself as being too good for it. Just…” He shrugs, tries to find the right word in the miasma of corporate jargon that’s perpetually floating around in his brain. “Not shiny enough, I guess.”

“Hmm,” says Eddie, and that’s it. For a while. “My husband actually weirdly idolises the whole thing. He doesn’t have a clue what I actually do for a living, but I think he imagines that we all hang around talking on rotary phones and yelling about stocks. I’m pretty sure he thinks I work on Wall Street, actually.” He pauses again, staring at the dark, primordial swirl of his terrible coffee. “He’d be bored out of his skull, probably. Not sure he’d want to come.” 

And then it hits Jamie, like a freight train, but the train is a fabulous, wonderful idea. It’s also a terrible one, and it totally risks torpedoing this burgeoning friendship before it even gets off the ground, but sometimes, Jamie tells himself, you just have to take a big step forward and hope that you’re not standing on the edge of a cliff.

He can feel his heart thudding an anxious tattoo against his ribcage. _You can be brave_ , he tells himself. _You can do this. He probably won’t bite_. 

“We could, uh. Make a pact,” he says, and the words sound almost confident as he says them, so far away from what he feels that he almost laughs hysterically. “I obviously want Nishat to come, and I think you probably want your husband to come, too, so maybe we could, like, agree to both try and get them on board. Sort of like a confidence boost thing? Like, it’ll be super awkward for me to ask Nishat, but if I know that you’re asking your husband too, then maybe it’ll be easier. Or something. I don’t know.” He pauses, gathers his scattered thoughts. “Plus, if they both come, then they’ll have someone else to talk to about, uh, not work things. So maybe that’ll help, too.”

His heart is beating a little more wildly, now. He’s pretty sure he’s massively overstepped, but then he’s always been an all-or-nothing sort of guy, and he’s pretty sick of working with nothing.

“You really want your partner to see what your work life is like, huh,” says Eddie. 

“Yeah!” replies Jamie, more enthusiastically than he intends to. “It’s like, half of my life. Nishat’s the other half. It would be super cool to marry the two up. Otherwise, it’s like—like I’m one person for half the day, and someone else for the other half, and sometimes I’m not sure who the real person is, or if either one of them is actually the real one. Like, maybe the real one is the guy in between both halves, and that’s fu—weird. Just weird.”

From outside the kitchen, Jamie can hear Susan Cooper clacking one-fingered on the keyboard. Somewhere further away, a clock ticks, discordant with the sound of typing. Eddie looks at Jamie, head slightly tilted.

“Huh,” says Eddie again, and he pauses a moment before saluting Jamie with his coffee cup again. _A signature move_ , thinks Jamie, giddily. _Almost like a best friend handshake_. “Deal,” Eddie says, offering a small smile to seal the promise, and when Eddie walks out of the kitchen, Jamie punches the air in jubilation so hard that he almost takes out an entire shelf of mugs.

* * *

Jamie puts his part of his plan into place on Saturday afternoon. He’s sat on the bed, wearing one of Nishat’s oversized college sweatshirts and a pair of boxers, idly pretending to read Bill Denbrough’s latest novel, which, honestly, isn’t doing much for him; it’s over 1,000 pages long and seems, from the revelation they just had on page 376, to be largely about a demon clown from outer space, which even Jamie doesn’t think is all that scary. Plus, there’s this whole weird undertow of cultural appropriation, and it’s making him feel skeezy. 

On the floor of their studio apartment, Nishat, clad in a pair of old denim overalls, is working on a backdrop commission for some local theatre company. They don’t usually do theatre, but the play is ‘transcendent’, apparently. 

Jamie would quite like to transcend this conversation, if he’s honest, but he knows it has to be done.

He’s made a promise to Eddie. If they’re ever going to be anything even approaching friends, it’s probably best that he doesn’t start by totally fucking Eddie over.

“So,” he begins, twisting the corner of the bedspread between his thumb and forefinger. It’s a pretty cool bedspread, decorated with lots of little embroidered seahorses. He’d picked it up at a garage sale a couple of years ago and it had taken six goes through the washer to finally remove what looked suspiciously like a bloodstain, but it was worth it. “There’s this party thing at work on Wednesday, if you wanted to come.”

Nishat looks up from where they’re sat on the floor, stencilling a series of perfect geometric circles onto a piece of balsa wood. “A party thing? Like a party?”

“Well, yeah,” says Jamie. He rubs his thumbnail over the bedspread, feels it catch on some of the loose threads. “Some dude’s leaving, so they’re putting on a party for him. They’re hiring out, like, an actual bar.”

“An actual bar,” repeats Nishat, raising both eyebrows. They finish drawing around one of the circles, and meet Jamie’s eye again. “Sounds fancy. An excellent choice of venue for a party thing.”

“There’ll probably be wine.”

“Wine, you say?” Nishat stands up, puts their hand on their hips and appraises their work. To Jamie, it just looks like a bit of wood with some circles on it, but Nishat seems pretty content with it, so he doesn’t say anything. “Now you’re talking. How can I pass up the opportunity to rub shoulders with your corporate bros over a glass of vintage Cab Sav?”

And Jamie gets it, he really does; these types of work events are barely even his thing, let alone Nishat’s, and he’s the one with an MBA. They’re always full of dudes in suits that cost, like, three months’ rent, and some guy always ends up making an inappropriate joke about his wife, and everyone else has to laugh along like they’re not choking down vomit, and there’s always, always some awful person who watches the barman pour him a glass of prosecco and then says that it’s not champagne, actually, unless it comes from the Champagne region of France, and you have to nod along like wow, that’s _really_ fucking interesting, tell me more, when actually you just want to pour the prosecco over his head.

But, still. It’s Jamie’s job, and, in that depressingly capitalist way of all things, it’s also his life, and he can’t do much about it.

Eddie gets it. He’d said he got it. He’s not alone in this. He can do this.

“Eddie’s bringing his husband,” says Jamie, more to prove a point than anything else, hoping beyond measure that Eddie’s husband has, in fact, agreed to come. “He’s agreed to come, even though Eddie says he’ll probably have a shitty time. So, you know. You’d have someone else to talk to. And me, obviously. Would it be so bad?”

In response, Nishat puts their hand on their narrow hips, a smile twitching at the corner of their mouth. “Eddie?” 

It’s then that, with a sinking feeling, Jamie realises his mistake. “Uh. Yes.”

“Of Kaspbrak fame?”

He wraps the end of the bedspread around his thumb, like his thumb is wearing a little helmet. “That’s him.”

“The guy you’ve been desperately trying to befriend for, like, three centuries?”

“Four years,” mumbles Jamie, ears burning something rotten.

“So you’re on first name terms now? When did that happen?”

“When I asked him if he was going, and he said he didn’t think his husband would enjoy it, so I said that my partner probably wouldn’t either, and then we bonded over both our significant others being far too cultured for the philistine mob of corporate America,” he replies.

Nishat laughs. “Aww, babe,” they say, flopping into bed alongside Jamie and poking him gently in the side. “Do you have a crush? Is he your work husband? Are you going to have lots of little work babies and argue about whether to send them to private school or let them try their lot with the unwashed public?”

Jamie prods them right back. “No,” he answers. Nishat raises their eyebrow, clearly biting back a laugh, and Jamie scrubs his hands over his eyes. “ _No._ I do not have a work crush on Eddie Kaspbrak. If anything, he’s like—”

“Your work dad,” says Nishat, nodding sagely. 

“Christ, no,” says Jamie, and almost shudders at the thought of Eddie Kaspbrak in a paternal context. God, he probably wears polo shirts and slacks and doesn’t let his kids play in the grass, on account of all the stains. Not that Jamie thinks Eddie actually has kids. Although, then again, he wouldn’t really know. “A work uncle, if anything. A very distant work uncle, by marriage, who you only see at, like, your cousins’ weddings and who only ever bothers to write ‘hb’ on your Facebook wall for your birthday.”

“A distant uncle by marriage who you also want to fuck,” says Nishat, and Jamie hits them with a pillow. Nishat laughs in response, grabbing the pillow off Jamie and throwing it across the room. It’s not an impressive throw, but then it’s not a large room. “Look, it’s fine, babe. We all get little work crushes from time to time. It’s, like, the only normal part of the workplace.”

Jamie pouts, folding his arms. “Who’s your work crush, then?” 

Nishat raises an eyebrow. “I work from home.”

“I know,” says Jamie. “I just wanted to hear you say it.”

Nishat rolls their eyes, but they’re still smiling. “And you also want to hear me say that I’ll go to this party thing, I guess.”

At that, Jamie props himself up on both elbows and looks down at Nishat. They have a smear of charcoal along their left cheekbone. “I mean, ideally, yes.”

“If I go, will I finally get to meet the famous Eddie Kaspbrak?” 

“And his husband, apparently,” says Jamie, nodding. He reaches out and smudges the charcoal on their cheek with his thumb; it doesn’t disappear, but instead becomes something greyer, something less defined.

“Then honestly, Jamie. Of course I’ll come.” They grin at him, brilliant and blinding, and Jamie feels that little knot tighten in his chest, that knot that says _I did the right thing, moving here for you_. “I’m not promising to have, like, the best time ever, but if you want me there, I’ll be there. And I hope, for your sake, that his husband is an absolute troll.”

* * *

He finds Eddie in his office Monday morning. He knocks on Eddie’s door, resisting the urge to rap his knuckles in a jaunty melody. It’s not even 8am yet. He somehow feels like Eddie would be less than appreciative. 

“Yeah?” comes Eddie’s reply. He sounds slightly distracted, but it’s an invitation nonetheless. 

Jamie opens the door slowly, and steps inside. It doesn’t have much to differentiate it from any other office in corporate America, really. There’s four walls, one of which is made of frosted glass and also contains a door, and one of which has a large window that peers out onto Manhattan. Eddie’s desk is not beneath the window, but instead faces the far wall, presumably so he doesn’t get distracted by the view. As well as the signed photo on his desk, Eddie has a print on one wall which, Jamie knows, is a map of Maine, and a large whiteboard on the other wall, near his desk, which is almost entirely full of words like _risk repository_ and _mitigation_ and _accumulated experience_ written in neat cursive. There’s a large rubber plant in a teal ceramic pot in one corner, and a balance ball and folded yoga mat next to it. And the prosthetic arm-cum-handstand, of course.

Eddie’s desk chair, much like his mouse, keyboard and mouse pad, is ergonomic. He has two computer monitors, one of which is dedicated entirely to Excel. The same coffee cup always rests just next to his mouse pad, a bright red novelty one which says _I went to Maine and all I got was this lousy mug!_ The pen pot on the edge of his desk contains exactly ten ballpoints. Jamie has never seen that number change.

Eddie finishes typing something, pressing the keys somewhat more firmly than anyone else might, which makes Jamie think he’s probably sending a particularly blunt email. Eddie’s email mannerisms are legendary. It took him six months to stop signing everything off with ‘Regards’.

“Can I help you?” asks Eddie, turning around in his chair and fixing Jamie with a glare which, to be quite honest, is pretty much the way he looks at anybody at any given time. 

“Uh,” says Jamie, folding his arms and then, thinking better of it, clasping them behind his back. He rocks forwards on his heels, and outside, through the window, he watches two pigeons fight over a squashed bit of bread on the adjacent rooftop. He can do this. He has an MBA. “It’s about the party. You know, the thing we said yesterday? About going if we could get our other halves to come along?”

Eddie blinks, and Jamie feels something sink in his gut. They’d seemed almost companionable yesterday. Like he was finally getting somewhere. The space between them feels almost frosty, now. 

“Yes,” says Eddie, after a few moments. “I remember that we said that.”

“Right,” says Jamie. “OK. Good. That’s good. That you remember, that is. It’s… good.”

On the rooftop, one pigeon pecks the other very hard in the butt. Jamie empathises with the peckee more than he feels he should.

“Can they not come?” asks Eddie. “Your partner. Do they have, uh, an art show?”

Jamie blinks; he hadn’t honestly expected Eddie to remember that Nishat was an artist, let alone that they were putting on shows all month. That’s a good sign, he tells himself, despite the fact that the atmosphere is more stilted than the dialogue on an episode of _Keeping up With the Kardashians_. 

And then he realises: Eddie thinks he’s bailing. He thinks Jamie’s come here to say that the plan failed. That they won’t be going after all.

“No!” he says quickly, eyes widening. Eddie's lips quirk. “No, they’re in. They said they’re coming. That’s what I came here to tell you.”

“Well, good,” says Eddie, rubbing his chin. “Because if it turned out I was bringing my husband for no reason, I’d be pretty tempted to just seal myself in the house and never come to work again.”

 _House_ , Jamie thinks. _He works in Manhattan, but he lives in a house, not an apartment. He probably doesn't even have a disgusting downstairs neighbour called Jeffrey, who only ever wears string vests._ That’s new information. He files it away: either Eddie or his husband are rich as balls.

“I guess I’ll tell Karen that I’ll be taking that plus one,” says Jamie. 

“You better,” says Eddie, something like a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. “If I have to deal with my own husband at a work party, I need someone else who’ll talk to him, for my own sanity.”

“So, I’ll see you on Wednesday?”

Eddie’s eyes are full of mirth. “I’ll probably see you before then, seeing as my office is about ten feet from your cubicle.”

“Right!” says Jamie, mentally cursing himself for not being a functional human being. “Yeah, no, of course. Right. I’ll see you… probably in an hour or so. Goodbye.”

 _Goodbye_. Jesus Christ.

“See you,” says Eddie, sounding somewhat bemused, and Jamie turns on his heel and flees, fairly certain that Eddie’s never going to want to be his friend unless he can get a grip on this weird hero worship thing he has going on.

But still, he thinks later, sitting at his desk and eating a bowl of sushi that Nishat made for him, he’s going to a party. Eddie will be there. He’s going to meet Eddie’s _husband_. 

Eddie lives in a _house_. 

He works solidly through the rest of the afternoon, half distracted by visions of him and Nishat having dinner with Eddie Kaspbrak and his husband in their understated townhouse on West 17th Street, all hardwood floors and spot lighting and smooth, chrome lines. He wonders what Eddie’s husband is like. He imagines that he’s probably a sort of more placid version of Eddie, all neatly combed blonde hair and cashmere sweaters and pressed slacks. He and Eddie probably have the kind of picture perfect marriage where they call each other ‘sweetheart’ and ‘honey’ and eat kale even on the weekend, and if they have a dog, it’s probably a golden retriever. His husband’s name is almost certainly Steve, and they probably watch a lot of French films.

Steve probably has excellent cheekbones, has never had so much as a pimple in his entire life, and frequently gets mistaken for someone in his early 30s. They do yoga together every Sunday afternoon to a carefully curated Spotify playlist that consists solely of whalesong and Tibetan throat singing. Steve irons all of Eddie’s shirts and Eddie polishes Steve’s wingtip Oxfords until they shine brighter than the brilliant white of Steve’s teeth. They make pleasant jokes about the stock exchange and property management and climate change, and they sometimes gently discuss politics—god, what if Steve’s a _Republican_ —but never argue. They have a glass of dry white wine every evening and talk about their work days. 

Steve is, almost certainly, a banker. 

And there’s Jamie, 29 and ginger and with only two suits that fit properly, the dawn of a truly impressive spot on his chin, and a small splodge of drying soy sauce on his shirt cuff, and he just wants Eddie to _like_ him, just wants someone in this office who he can actually call a friend except for Susan Cooper, who really does need to diversify her lunch portfolio, and he’s suddenly keenly, acutely aware that he may have made a terrible mistake in attempting to ingratiate himself into Eddie Kaspbrak’s perfect life.

Eddie does _yoga_. Jamie gets a stitch walking to the kitchen.

By the end of the workday, Jamie is feeling somewhat less excited about Wednesday evening.


	2. Chapter 2

Jamie arrives at the office on Wednesday morning feeling no small amount of trepidation. He’s spent the whole commute here trying to convince himself that it’s just something he ate, but he only managed to wolf down a few mouthfuls of unseasoned porridge before running out of the apartment like a lunatic to catch his train after hitting snooze too many times, so he’s not doing a great job of fooling himself. 

The truth is that he’s nervous about tonight. He thinks he even dreamt of Steve; he vaguely remembers waking up at around 4am with the lingering image of someone who looked quite a lot like Captain America making him poached eggs in the morning. 

It’s getting ridiculous. Eddie isn’t married to Captain fucking America. Captain America isn’t even real. Probably.

But if he were, then he’d totally be married to Eddie, and how is Jamie supposed to deal with that? How is he supposed to meet this man that Eddie has married and not immediately spill his drink all over himself, or trip over his own feet, or just blow chunks everywhere? And then Eddie will _scorn_ him, and Jamie will be stuck having to spend his lunch breaks talking to Susan Cooper about the best way to hard boil an egg forever.

He gets to the office building and sketches the briefest salute to the security dude, punching in the number for his floor on the elevator and sagging against it when it arrives. He can do this. He can get through the day without being completely consumed by the fear of making a dick of himself in front of Eddie’s husband, and blowing his chances at becoming Eddie’s friend forever. He totally can.

When he gets into the office, he heads straight for his desk, intending to wash out his coffee cup from yesterday and fill it with something that’s at least 85% sugar.

“Hey, man,” says Carl, whose desk is directly in front of Jamie’s and who seems to spend at least half his workday searching up photos of Rachel McAdams on Google Images. He’s not a bad dude, Jamie supposes, although he could probably do with losing the goatee.

“Hey,” returns Jamie, slinging his satchel down on his desk and wincing when it almost topples yesterday’s tepid cup of coffee. He thought he’d at least emptied it. “Are you going to the thing tonight? Andrei’s leaving party?” 

“Oh.” Carl pulls a face. “Yeah, I guess. Unfortunately.”

Jamie frowns. “Why unfortunately?”

“I had tickets to this other thing.” Carl pulls his phone out of his pocket, offering Jamie a glimpse of his lockscreen, which this week is a blurred still frame of Rachel McAdams in _Disobedience_ , and fiddles around with it. “Was meant to be going to see Richie Tozier’s show, but he literally cancelled it yesterday. Super fucking last minute. The refund hasn’t even gone through yet.” 

“Bummer,” says Jamie, swilling around the dregs in his coffee and watching the white scum on top disintegrate. “Did he say why he cancelled it?”

Carl snorts, and shows Jamie his phone screen, which is open on Tozier’s Twitter account.

“Last minute pasta emergency,” reads Jamie. “Huh. Wonder what that means.”

Carl shrugs. “Who even knows with that dude?” he says. “He’s pretty weird. Could mean anything from a sprained ankle to his entire family being taken hostage. Still, he’s promised everyone a full refund plus a comp ticket to his next show, so that’s pretty chill. I’m not gonna, like, cancel him over it.”

“Still sucks, though,” offers Jamie. “When you’re excited about something, you know, and it doesn’t pan out. Like, you spend all that time psyching yourself up for it, telling yourself that you’re doing the right thing, that you’re excited and not just shitting yourself, and then the day rolls around, and you’re just like, can I do this? Is it gonna happen? And then it doesn’t, and it’s all for nothing. It sucks.”

Carl blinks at him. “It’s just a show, dude,” he says, slowly. “I’m not gonna cry into my porridge about it.” He squints. “Do _you_ want to cry into my porridge about it? Because I gotta tell you, dude, you seem to be taking this harder than I am, and it was my birthday present from my wife.”

“Sorry,” Jamie offers, flushing. “Didn’t get a lot of sleep.”

“Sorry to hear it, dude,” says Carl. “Looks like we’re both having a shitty day.” He reaches his hand out with a beckoning gesture. “C’mon, give me that. I’ll make you a coffee.”

“Can you use the coffee machine?” asks Jamie, handing Carl his mug.

Carl snorts again, and makes a disapproving face at the vestiges of Jamie’s coffee. “No, man. That’s Kaspbrak’s purview. You’re getting the shit from a jar.”

Jamie waits for Carl to leave, and then slumps down into his seat, sighing. He’s going to be stuck with the shit from a jar forever, he realises, because he’s going to ruin his own life this evening, and then Eddie will never show him how to use the coffee machine.

When Carl comes back, he hands Jamie his mug with a funny little bow, and for a brief, fleeting moment, Jamie wonders if maybe, after he’s royally fucked up his chance of becoming Eddie’s friend, he might be able to forge some sort of friendship with Carl instead. It wouldn’t be quite the same, he knows, but he might at least have someone to talk to about Susan and her boiled egg habit. 

Except then Carl sits down and immediately loads up a Rachel McAdams fan page on Internet Explorer, and Jamie sinks down even further in his chair.

* * *

He doesn’t have a chance to talk to Eddie all day, until just before they’re leaving, when he runs into Eddie right by the elevators.

“You still coming later?” asks Eddie, throwing his coat over his shoulder. He looks like a dapper detective from the 1930s, braces and all, and Jamie wishes he were even half as cool. His own shirt is polyester blend and has an ink stain from a broken biro on the cuff.

“Yeah,” answers Jamie, trying hard not to sound as miserable as he feels. 

He must fail, because Eddie furrows his brow. “You seemed excited about it the other day.”

“I am!” says Jamie. “Very excited.”

“Did your partner pull out or something?”

“No! No, no. They’re still coming.”

“Well, good, because so is my husband, and frankly I need someone else there to keep him entertained. He’ll wander off like a little kid at a zoo otherwise.” He presses the button for the ground floor. “So, what’s up?”

“Nothing, honestly,” lies Jamie. 

Eddie raises both eyebrows. “We’re not talking about this in an elevator, because we’re not in an episode of The West Wing, so if you want to tell me anything, now’s the time.”

“I’m kind of worried that my partner will have a shitty time,” says Jamie. “Or that the other people there will make them feel shitty, more specifically.” Eddie frowns at him again, but this time it’s with an almost fatherly air of concern, and Jamie shrugs, suddenly feeling hot under the collar. “It’s dumb.”

“It’s not dumb,” says Eddie. “Some of the guys are jerks. They’re absolutely going to give my husband a hard time, I know that. I might even join in. But look, I can promise you one thing, if nothing else.”

“What’s that?”

“They won’t win.” Eddie smiles then, and shakes his head. “He makes arguing into an art form. Anyone says anything about your partner, and they’re really going to regret it, plus ever being born.”

“Oh,” says Jamie, struck by the image of Eddie’s incredibly muscular husband, Steve, just beating the shit out of someone for the sake of Nishat’s honour. It’s not a very appealing image. “Right.”

Eddie looks at him then, and opens his mouth to say something, but he’s interrupted by the ding of the elevator. He steps in, smoothly, and holds the button to keep the doors open. 

“You coming down now?”

Jamie shakes his head. “I’m just going to move some paper from the printer into the other place,” he says, nonsensically, and then spends ten minutes doing power poses in the office bathroom.

* * *

Studio 52, from the outside, looks almost acceptable. Sure, Jamie’s pretty certain that the awning isn’t actually supposed to be charcoal grey; a perfect stripe of navy blue has been washed clear down the centre by the recent rain, and three of the fairy lights that wrap around the _Studio 52_ sign, scrawled in a dull white generic calligraphic font across the building’s frontage, are out. But still. It’s cosy looking. Not one of those boring chain places where the one in New York is the same as the one in buttfuck Missouri.

He and Nishat arrive at exactly 8.03pm, a time that Jamie has specifically plumped for so as to be fashionably late, but not impolitely so. His hope is that everyone who’s even more awkward than him might have already paired off, so he won’t be stuck trying to make stilted conversation with Tadeo again about his wife’s mayonnaise habit. He’s also hoping, if he admits it to himself, that Eddie and Steve—he really needs to stop thinking of him as Steve before he actually knows his name—might already be here. It’ll save him having to drag Nishat into a corner and hide behind a coat rack before Dreadful Steve can start drunkenly bellowing in his ear about how Jamie should really consider opening a savings account. 

For his part, Jamie thinks he’s scrubbed up OK. Aware that he’s basically only here to hang out with Eddie, who wears suits with pressed sleeves and cufflinks, and Eddie’s husband, who presumably presses those sleeves for him, Jamie has managed to dig out the dark blue suit jacket he bought for his interview all those years ago, and, thanks to a bad habit of working through lunch, he’s relieved that it still fits. His shirt is one of those ones with little buttons at the collar—Eddie would know the proper name for that, probably—and he thinks it looks pretty neat. Nishat has stolen the trousers that go with Jamie’s suit jacket, which is probably for the best; they definitely suit them more than him. Slightly taller than Jamie, Nishat manages to make them look almost trendy, with a little pop of teal sock showing at their ankle. 

“An accent colour,” they’d explained back at the apartment, pointing their toes like a ballerina. “To show Eddie’s husband that we’re kin.”

“Very spicy,” Jamie had replied, approvingly.

Privately, Jamie had thought that the chances of Eddie’s husband wearing interesting socks was really rather small, but he hadn’t wanted to pop Nishat’s metaphorical balloon.

When they get inside Studio 52, some bored looking coat check attendant takes their overcoats and hangs them haphazardly on a hook on the exposed brick wall. They aren’t handed any sort of card or number to get their coats back. Nishat grimaces at Jamie, and he grimaces right back. Perhaps he’d put too much faith in Theo and Olwen.

The interior is, at least, marginally better than the outside. The walls are all red brick, with warm-toned fairy lights dotted around the place, and a particularly gaudy plastic chandelier drips low from the ceiling. A huge stained glass window opens out onto the street outside, depicting a rotund white man with folded arms in a brown coat and hat. The bar is a low sweep of gleaming black marble at the back of the room, and all the tables and stools have been pushed to the sides to allow for people to congregate and socialise in the lacuna left by their removal. If he looks closely, he can make out the tell-tale bloodstain of spilled red wine in the corner of the room, dried down and sticky. If there were more women here, their high heels might cling to it. 

It’s technically a corporate event, though, so he can count the women here on one hand. All of Jamie’s myriad coworkers are milling about in the middle of the room, suit-clad, many of them bald-pated, swilling champagne flutes in one hand and patting each other on the back with the other.

“Wow,” says Nishat, leaning closer to Jamie so they can speak low and still be heard. “This place manages to be both fancy and awful at the same time. I’m grudgingly impressed.”

“I’m a big fan of the celebrity tribute stained glass window,” agrees Jamie. 

Nishat squints. “Is it Jack Black?”

“I think it’s supposed to be John Candy.”

They cringe. “Tough luck.”

The two of them step forward into the room, and Jamie takes the opportunity to grab two glasses of champagne from a tray that some harried member of staff has left near the door, handing one to Nishat, who accepts it with a small nod. Steeling himself, he grabs Nishat’s free hand and pulls them through the throng of suited coworkers and makes their way over to one of the tables that’s been pushed to the side. On their way over, he feels a meaty hand on the crook of his elbow.

“James!” says some random guy he’s pretty sure he’s never actually met, with huge auburn sideburns and nothing on top to balance it out. “Glad to see you’ve brought your—”

“Partner,” interjects Nishat, and extends their hand for Sideburns to shake. “Pleasure to meet you. Jamie’s told me so much about you.”

Sideburns frowns, but shakes their hand. “I haven’t even told you my name,” he says.

“You’re very distinctive,” says Nishat, gesturing at Sideburns’ sideburns. “He’s told me all about the distinguished man with rich auburn hair.”

Jamie has, of course, done no such thing, but Sideburns actually preens at that, stroking his left sideburn proudly. “Ah yes, well,” he says, and turns to Jamie, grinning. “Us redheads must stick together, right James?”

He extends his hand for Jamie to shake, this time, and he does.

“Right, sir,” says Jamie, weakly, wondering what the fuck is going on, and how Nishat has managed to smooth things over in the space of about three seconds flat. He’s starting to realise, with a guilty feeling blooming in his ribcage, that he may have severely underestimated Nishat. 

Is this going _well_?

Sideburns flashes Nishat one last, almost lascivious smile, and then retreats to mingle with the other men in very expensive suits, leaving Jamie shaking his head and contemplating finding a bottle of champagne and draining it in one. 

“That went well,” observes Nishat, and they raise their glass, taking a demure sip. “You know, I think I might be more cut out for this corporate dudebro bullshit than I thought.”

“I think so too,” says Jamie, clinking his champagne glass against Nishat’s. “I’m kind of freaked out about it, honestly.”

Nishat laughs. “Don’t be freaked out,” they say. “I’ve been to lots of gallery openings, and I guess rich people are just the same whether they’re hanging around priceless art installments or office parties. Just watch and learn, young padawan.”

And, completely shell-shocked, Jamie does. He watches as Nishat leads them through the room, occasionally stopping to briefly engage with someone, at one point complimenting a squat man who Jamie vaguely recognises as his boss’ boss’ manager on his patent leather wingtips, and, with a completely straight face, introducing Jamie to him as one of ‘Kaspbrak’s bright young things.’ 

Jamie’s boss’ boss’ manager, who Eddie once bitterly referred to as the Top Frog on account of his pouty lower lip, eyes Jamie appraisingly. 

“I’ve heard all about your work, young man,” says Top Frog, and, once more, Jamie finds himself grasping his champagne flute like a lifeline in one hand and shaking hands with his superior with the other. “You’ll go far, if Kaspbrak likes you.” He runs his eyes over Jamie’s suit. “We’ll have to get you better clothes, though.”

“Yes, sir,” Jamie offers, pathetically, and lets Nishat drag him away to a table in the far corner of the room, finally away from other people.

“God, this is exhilarating,” says Nishat, filling up their glass from the dregs of an abandoned champagne bottle on the table and then topping up Jamie’s from their own glass. “It feels like I’m playing corporate chess.” 

“What the fuck is going on,” says Jamie. 

Nishat shrugs, and nudges Jamie’s glass. “Do you ever _talk_ to these people, Jamie?”

“Of course not!” he hisses. “They’re—” He flails his free hand, trying to drag the correct word up through the maelstrom of his confused consciousness. “Important!”

Nishat looks at him, and pats him on the head. It would be patronising, coming from anyone else, but it’s always been their thing, ever since Jamie drunkenly asked Nishat out in a bar by patting them on the head and complimenting their hat, and it’s frankly somewhat ridiculous how comforted Jamie still feels by it. 

“Babe,” says Nishat, “you know I’m saying this because I love you, but also because it’s true: you’re worth ten of all of these guys. Sure, their suits are worth ten of yours—”

“More like a hundred.”

“—but regardless, they’re not inherently _better_ than you just because they drink, I don’t know, water filtered through diamonds out of crystal tumblers. You do know that, right?”

Jamie shrugs, because the thing is that he does know that, objectively. He knows that all humans are equal, and so on, and so forth, and that the worth of a man is not in his wallet, but in his heart, or something like that. He saw it on a motivational poster once, but that poster was in a banker’s living room right above a solid gold bust of Richard Nixon, so he hadn’t taken it much to heart. 

But the thing is—the thing is that it’s entirely possible to know something, and also to not know it, all at once. Because Jamie has seen the salaries of some of these people. He’s seen Top Frog’s watch, and he once spent half an hour on Google trying to find the exact model, and then had a panic attack in the bathroom at the six figure price tag. He’s seen the Lexus that Sideburns drives to the office every day, the one he parks in the special underground car park beneath the office building, where he gives his keys to a valet so that he doesn’t have to bother with finding a parking space for himself.

Jamie’s salary is closer to that valet’s than to Sideburns’.

Hell, even Eddie must make a pretty decent wad of cash, if his prosthetic arm is anything to go by. That shit doesn’t come cheap, and Jamie’s pretty sure it doesn’t come on insurance, either, a fancy model like that. And Eddie doesn’t even wear it.

So, are these men inherently better than Jamie, just because their monthly take-home pay could probably buy the shitty studio that Jamie rents? Probably not, if Jamie lets himself be naive and ideological for a moment. But does the world treat them better because of it? You bet.

Jamie doesn’t have to park his own car, but that’s because he can’t afford one.

“Yeah,” he says, half meaning it. “I know that.”

Nishat frowns, and is clearly about to say something else when they’re interrupted by a loud and somewhat nasally voice, coming from somewhere just behind Jamie’s shoulder.

“If this is an office party, does that mean I get to photocopy my ass?” says the voice. 

He sounds familiar, somehow, like maybe Jamie’s heard him on TV or something. 

“You need to actually have an ass to photocopy it,” snorts the other person, who, Jamie thinks, sounds quite a lot like Eddie Kaspbrak, except he’s laughing, so it can’t be him. “You try to photocopy that pancake in your jeans, it’ll just cook. And anyway, you think someone’s gonna lug a photocopier halfway across Manhattan just so you can photocopy your ass at a party? No, dude.”

“But it’s a sacred rite,” argues the first man. “The cathartic climax to the office party ritual. Hey, can we get an Uber to your office right now and bring back a photocopier? Really liven this shit up?”

The other man sighs. “If you want me to get fired, sure. We can do that.”

“I don’t want that at all, Eds. If you get fired, who’ll buy all my ramen?”

“Hot concept, but you, fucko.”

The first man laughs suddenly, a bright, loud peal. “Don’t speak capitalism to me, Spaghuardo. I’ll get all hot under the collar.” 

Nishat, who’s facing the men behind Jamie, is staring at them, wide-eyed, and Jamie turns around, trying to see who the hell these guys are, having such a frankly weird conversation in a room full of men wearing $100,000 Rolexes. 

And suddenly, as though in a sit-com, Jamie finds himself face-to-face with Eddie Kaspbrak, dressed in a slightly nicer suit than normal, complete with a dark green tie and, Jamie’s pretty sure, even though he can’t see them, probably also wearing matching socks. He’s standing next to a very tall man. 

Unlike Eddie, the very tall man is not wearing a nice suit, but blue horn-rimmed glasses, a forest green blazer, and a buttercup yellow button-up resplendent with a pattern of little ducklings wearing top hats. The tall man has his arm slung companionably around Eddie’s shoulder, and is holding a glass of what looks like whisky.

Obviously, it can’t be him, but the man both looks and sounds exactly like Richie Tozier. 

Jamie knows a fair few things about Richie Tozier. Probably more than he knows about Eddie Kaspbrak, if he’s honest with himself. Which, again. Depressing. 

He knows that Richie Tozier is gay. He knows this because everyone knows this, because Richie Tozier was briefly cancelled on Twitter in 2016 after he puked on stage, went missing for three months, and reappeared with a series of 29 one-letter tweets that spelt out ‘yippee kay yay I’m super fucking gay’, followed by a photo of him fellating a hotdog, including the bun. There was a lot of mustard. #Dicktozier trended on Twitter for three days.

He knows that Richie Tozier got married a few years ago, to a man he refers to only as ‘Spaghetti’, and that Spaghetti is vehemently opposed to all forms of social media, and steadfastly refuses to make any appearances on Richie Tozier’s Twitter or Instagram. He knows this because Richie Tozier once posted a photograph of his husband’s bare feet on Instagram and captioned it ‘some raw spaghetti for the foot freaks’, and then, half an hour later, he posted a screenshot of a text from someone whose contact name was ‘ball and chain but make it cute’, which threatened, in very explicit terms, to stick both feet up Richie Tozier’s ass if he didn’t delete the photo. The caption to the screenshot was ‘my husband, making yet more promises he won’t keep’. He did not delete the photo. 

He also knows that Richie Tozier is possibly the strangest man alive. He knows this because he saw the episode of Conan a few months ago where Richie Tozier was the guest of honour, and the clip of his interview currently has over 15 million views on YouTube. During the interview, he spent nearly five full minutes expounding why _Trolls 2_ was a better movie than _The Godfather_ , referencing the theory of Bertolt Brecht, Hegel, and Victor Raskin. Jamie had watched the interview with a sort of wide-eyed awe at the audacity of the claim, and, after five minutes, at how much he found himself agreeing with it. The comments on that particular YouTube clip were very inflammatory. Jamie had read precisely four and then closed the browser.

Richie Tozier had also told Conan a story about the time he and his husband had gone grocery shopping and had a full-blown argument about the relative merits of coconut flour, which culminated in Richie Tozier’s husband purchasing fourteen bags of it and becoming something of an amateur baker, to the point that his husband had resorted to giving cake to random people in the street just to get rid of it. Richie Tozier had told this story to Conan O’Brien with such a dewy-eyed look of fondness that Jamie had almost felt his own heart bloom with something akin to tenderness. By the time Richie Tozier had finished regaling Conan with the tale, he was laughing so hard that he was evidently finding it a struggle to speak. So that’s something else that Jamie knows about Richie Tozier: he’s madly in love with his equally strange husband.

And he knows that Richie Tozier is currently on tour, and that his tour is, for some reason, named _Bill Denbrough Used To Be Tall_. He knows this because, about a fortnight ago, Nick from Accounts came up to their floor and announced that he had two spare tickets to Richie Tozier’s gig that evening, because his girlfriend had come down with the stomach flu. Jamie had offhandedly mentioned that he’d be interested, except Nishat had an art showing at a gallery in Brooklyn that evening, so he couldn’t take the tickets off him. Eddie had heard him express interest, and had snorted derisively.

“You’ll probably get more laughs at the art show,” he’d said. “Trust me. You’re not missing out.”

Jamie had thought back to the Conan interview he’d watched, thinking that Richie Tozier had seemed pretty funny, actually, and concluded that he and Eddie just didn’t have the same sense of humour.

So, Jamie knows that the man standing next to Eddie Kaspbrak in the open bar of Studio 52, about four feet away from a truly horrifying stained glass depiction of John Candy, cannot be Richie Tozier, because Eddie Kaspbrak does not _like_ Richie Tozier. He clearly can’t be married to him.

The man who definitely isn’t Richie Tozier stares back at Jamie, and nudges Eddie next to him. 

“Fans of yours?” he says. 

Eddie rolls his eyes. “The people I said were coming,” he replies.

The man who looks like Richie Tozier suddenly beams, smile so wide that it half threatens to split his face in two, and bounds over to sit at one of the spare seats at Jamie and Nishat’s table. Eddie rolls his eyes again, and follows.

“Um,” says Jamie, and he extends a hand for the man who can’t be Richie Tozier to shake across the table. “I’m Jamie.”

The man who can’t be Richie Tozier beams widely and, setting down the glass of whisky in front of Eddie, takes his hand, shaking it firmly.

“It’s an absolute pleasure to meet you,” he says to Jamie, still grinning like he’s won eight lotteries. “Edward has told me so much about you.”

“Uh,” says Jamie, at the exact time as Eddie says “Fuck off, dickwad, I have not,” and Nishat snorts. 

The Richie Tozier lookalike turns to Nishat then. “And who might you be?”

“Nishat,” says Nishat. “Hi. I don’t work here.”

“Me neither,” says the Richie Tozier lookalike. “Let’s both not have boring jobs together.”

Because this is Jamie’s life, apparently, Nishat and the Richie Tozier imposter then high five.

Eddie looks at Jamie. Jamie looks at Eddie. Eddie looks very, very unsure.

The man who isn’t Richie Tozier doesn’t seem to be in much of a hurry to introduce himself, which is pretty rude of him, Jamie thinks, mostly because he’s running out of ways to refer to him in his head. He can’t just call the dude ‘not Richie Tozier’ forever, after all.

Jamie clears his throat. “And you are?”

“Oh fuck, of course,” says the man who isn’t Richie Tozier. “Where are my manners? I told my esteemed husband here that not everyone would know who I am, and he was all, noooo, babe, you’re a worldwide celebrity, everyone will know who you are, they all follow you on Twitter because you’re so hot and funny, it’s gonna be so embarrassing when you come to my lame office party and everyone asks for your autograph and starts fainting from being in the presence of such a bonafide celeb, and I tried to tell him that not _everyone_ watches TV, like, ever, but he was having none of it.”

Eddie chokes on nothing. “I literally never said any of that, fucko.”

“It’s all semantics, babe,” says the man who isn’t a famous comedian, waving a hand airily. “But the fact remains, Spagheds, that I must introduce myself to these fine people.” He gestures towards Jamie and Nishat. “It’s custom, Eds. Do you want me to spit in the eye of custom? To come here, on the day of custom’s wedding, and—”

“Just fucking introduce yourself, for fuck’s sake,” says Eddie, downing his glass of whisky in one, and Jamie adds a point to his mental facts spreadsheet: Eddie Kaspbrak does not have a problem with profanity. 

A slow smile makes its way across not-Richie’s mouth, and next to him, Eddie visibly sighs.

“Please don’t do the bit.” 

“Eds, my sweet, I’m abso _lute_ ly gonna do the bit,” says the man Jamie is pretty sure can’t be Richie Tozier, and he suddenly stands up, shoving his chair backwards, and swoops into an exaggerated bow so that his back is bent at almost a 90 degree angle. Jamie almost expects to hear it creak like the hull of an old ship. “Charmed to meet you,” he says. “This here is _Ed_ mund Hillary, and I’m his good husband, Tenzing Nor _gay_.”

He straightens his spine again, pulls the chair up off the floor and sits back down, looking like the cat who’s got the proverbial cream.

Eddie cuffs the man who Jamie is pretty sure isn’t Richie Tozier in the arm. “That makes literally no sense. Edmund is a totally different name, dickhole.”

“But it has Ed at the beginning, so it totally works on a comedy level,” argues the man who Jamie is starting to think might actually be Richie Tozier. “It’s a great joke, Spagheds. I worked super hard on it. Watched that Everest documentary from 2005 with Jake Gyllenhaal for research and everything.”

Eddie scoffs. “For research, fucknuts? You literally cornered me in the kitchen and asked if I thought Jake Gyllenhaal looked spicier with or without the beard, and then you asked me if I thought he would look graceful even in death. I’m not sure what the fuck you were researching there, but it wasn’t Tenzing Norgay.” He squints. “Pretty sure the film is set in, like, 1999 anyway.”

“1996,” says the man who Jamie is coming to think of as quite likely to be Richie Tozier. “Get your mountaineering disasters right. And it’s a docudrama, Eds.”

“Oh, fuck you,” says Eddie. “It is _not_ a docudrama, you absolute shithead. It’s a disaster movie or some shit. I’ve seen the trailer.”

“Jake Gyllenhaal with a beard,” says the man who Jamie is pretty sure is Richie Tozier, framing the unshaven scrub on his own chin with both hands like a TV screen. “Spicy, right?”

Eddie coughs. “Anyway,” he says. “That’s not the fucking point, you asshole. My name isn’t Edmund. And don’t make fun of Tenzing Norgay.”

Across the table from Jamie, Nishat, an absolutely delighted look on their face, mouths _what the fuck_?

“Beg my absolute pardon, Spagheds,” says the man Jamie now realises has to be Richie Tozier, who is somehow married to Edward Kaspbrak, and _that_ is not something Jamie ever thought he’d have to come to terms with. “I didn’t realise you were such a fucking diehard fan of 1953 Everest summitter, Tenzing Norgay.”

“I’m not a fan, fuckhole. I’m just saying don’t make fun of his name.”

“I’m making fun of me! You know,” argues Richie Tozier. “With the gay part. Because I’m gay.”

“I’m still pretty sure that you shouldn’t make fun of Tenzing Norgay’s name,” says Eddie.

“Why the fuck not?”

“I don’t know, dude, because it’s offensive?”

“Literally to who?”

“It’s whom and you know it’s whom, and you know that I know that you know it’s whom,” says Eddie, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and exhaling deeply. Nishat is mouthing _what the fucking fuck_ over and over again. “And to sherpas, dickwad.”

“A thousand fucking humble apologies, my dear Edward,” says Richie Tozier, and then, to Eddie’s apparent horror, he turns to face the rest of the room, raising his nasally voice loud enough to carry across all of them. “Hey, quick question—any sherpas around here? Any of you a renowned and yet shamefully underappreciated guide to the wonders of the Himalayas?”

From the back of the room, which has fallen into a breathtaking, wonderful, terrible silence, someone clears their throat.

“Uh, my brother went to Base Camp last year,” says Tyler from Marketing. 

“But like, just to check,” says Richie Tozier, “he’s totally a weedy little white mountain tourist, right? Pisses and shits on the sacred mountain and generally has no business being there? Risks his life for fame and glory and maybe a good Insta snap of Nepal from a great height? Part of the rampant survival tourism that’s slowly killing the local people by making them economically dependent on risking their lives for the white man?”

“Uh,” says Tyler from Marketing again, and pauses. “Yeah.”

“Cool,” says Richie Tozier, smiling brightly, and he turns back to face Eddie, who is now glaring at him with a ferocity that makes Jamie’s stomach tighten. “So no sherpas here to offend, my little bowl of Spadghedmund. We’re all good. So, I repeat my earlier introduction.” He turns to face Jamie, extending his hand and grinning brilliantly. “Tenzing Norgay at your service.” 

He emphasises the _gay_ deliberately and with flourish.

“I swear to God, Rich,” mutters Eddie.

Jamie takes the proffered hand, shaking it numbly. “Um,” he says, eloquently. “Hello.”

“Hi,” says Richie, finally. “Richie Tozier, People Magazine’s Worst Dressed 2013 through 2016.”

“And every year since, unofficially,” mumbles Eddie. 

Richie slaps the table, making Jamie’s champagne glass teeter. “Eds gets off another good one!” he crows, and he lifts his hand up for a high five. “Don’t leave me hanging, Eds, I’m putting myself on the line here in front of our new friends.”

“I’m not wasting my one arm on a high five over your shitty fashion sense,” says Eddie, but when Richie doesn’t move his arm, Eddie does, in fact, high five him.

Jamie looks at Nishat, who’s looking at Eddie with an expression that Jamie recognises, with a sinking feeling, as the exact same expression they’d worn when Jamie had first used Eddie’s first name.

“I get it now,” they say. 

Eddie frowns, and Jamie makes a cutting motion across his neck, trying to gesture _no, nope, do not go there, I beg of you, please, no talk of how he’s my office uncle by marriage,_ but either Nishat doesn’t realise what he’s trying to say or they don’t care, because they lean forward, elbow propped on the table, chin resting on their wrist.

“Jamie didn’t tell me that we’d be rubbing shoulders with the Hollywood elite,” they say. 

“Jamie didn’t know!” says Jamie, defensively. “How could I have known?”

What the _hell_ happened to Steve, he wonders? When did that image crumble, like the civilisations of old? It would almost be easier if he could just make a dick of himself in front of a regular, perfect person, and not this bizarre, discomfiting celebrity.

Who the fuck is married to a celebrity, for God’s sake? That doesn’t happen outside of Lifetime movies or romance novels, which Jamie definitely doesn’t read, ever, especially not on weekends.

“What, you mean Eds doesn’t spend all day waxing rhapsodic about his world famous and incredibly sexy husband?” says Richie, one eyebrow raised, archly. Or at least Jamie thinks he’s trying to raise one eyebrow; he’s clearly not as dexterous in the forehead department as Eddie, because the other eyebrow is tilted, too.

“I don’t talk about my personal life at the office, no,” says Eddie. He looks, Jamie thinks, very much like he would have folded his arms petulantly right now, if he could.

“Eddie,” says Richie, and his voice sounds like the voice of a man who has just opened a pharaoh's tomb and discovered it to be full of priceless gold and artefacts. “Eddie, _Eddie_ , are you a tyrant?”

“I’m not a fucking tyrant, Rich,” says Eddie. “I just don’t want to be fodder for the gossip mill, thanks.”

RIchie turns to Nishat. “ _Fodder_ ,” he says, still in his Eighth Wonder of the World voice. “Can you believe it?”

Eddie’s jaw twitches. “I’m going to divorce you, you fucking shithead.”

“ _God_ , Eds, I wish you would,” sighs Richie. “You’d probably wear a suit to divorce court and you’d look so fucking hot.”

“Divorce court isn’t a thing,” says Eddie, neutrally. “And I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m literally wearing a suit right now.”

Richie clasps both hands to his heart. “Yeah, but I bet it would be _tailored_ ,” he says, as though in rapture. “You’d be like Catherine Zeta Jones in that shitty divorce film with George Clooney—”

“Intolerable Cruelty,” supplies Eddie. 

“—and you’d turn up to divorce court looking so fucking hot, just to show me what I was missing out on, and then I’d be like, no, Eds, I can’t go through with this, marriage is a sacred union between a man and a woman and shall not be torn asunder over one small argument about whether or not you’re an office tyrant, even though you clearly are, but let’s not get into that, Eddie my love, let us remain joined in holy matrimony for all eternity. And then we’d make out a whole bunch. It would be rad.”

“There’s so much wrong with what you just said,” says Eddie, but he’s smiling. 

Around them, the room is still filled with the sounds of glasses clinking, as men in very, very fancy suits probably make sketchy, half-legal business deals and compliment each other on their daughters, and Jamie realises, all of a sudden, that he’s having _fun_. That this version of Eddie, actually, isn’t so different at all from the Eddie who sticks the middle finger of his prosthetic up in protest on the last day of the ableist jerk who’d tried to get him fired, or the Eddie who manages to convince his famous—and still, what the fuck is up with that?—husband to come to a corporate party, just so that Jamie has some leverage to convince Nishat to come.

He’s not a different Eddie at all. He’s like a different shade of the same man. A shade which says ‘fuck’ a lot.

And Jamie’s having fun here, at a shitty corporate office party, with his partner, who once described themself as ‘Left of Anarcho-Communist’, his sardonic office uncle who’s fuelled entirely by caffeine and paracetamol, and a celebrity who once shaved his legs live on television just to prove that he could collect enough hair to give himself a fake beard.

Fuck Steve, thinks Jamie. Captain America can suck an entire bag of ass. Richie clearly doesn’t do yoga, if the creak of his spine is anything to go by, and Eddie married him anyway. 

They’re going to be best friends. He feels it in his own clicking bones.

* * *

Nishat spends a good ten minutes or so explaining something about Dadaism to Richie, who nods along thoughtfully, interjecting his own thoughts about someone called Marcel Duchamp, and Jamie is listening, he really is, but he’s not understanding any of it. 

“It’s all about Perelman,” Richie is saying, as Nishat nods, excitedly. 

Eddie slams his hand on the table and stands up. “I’m going to order myself a drink,” he says. “Because I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“Surrealism, Eds,” says Richie, reaching out and rubbing Eddie’s wrist. “Dumb nerd shit. Want me to come up with you?”

“I mean,” says Eddie, “you’re absolutely going to have to go and fetch them, because I can carry exactly one drink at a time, but no, you stay here and finish your dumb nerd shit.”

“You gonna order us all cocktails, Eds?” Richie asks, still rubbing Eddie’s wrist with his thumb. “One Slippery Nipple for me, please, just for the joy of hearing you order it.”

“Fuck you, is what I’ll order you. They’re getting something nice,” he says, gesturing between Jamie and Nishat, “because they’ve behaved. You’re getting tepid diet coke with four slices of lemon.”

“Ooh,” says Richie, “put some tap water in it, babe, really spice it up.”

“Fuck you,” says Eddie again, neutrally. “And I’m using your credit card,” he adds, and heads off.

Richie immediately braces himself against the table, expectantly. Jamie steels himself for whatever’s coming next.

“Oh my god,” says Richie, turning directly to Jamie. Jamie’s heart leaps into his throat. If Richie asks him what Eddie’s like at work, then there’s no way that Jamie’s not going to look stupid. “I thought he’d never leave. Quick, tell me right now: who has a little office crush on Eddie? There’s gotta be at least, what, twenty people who just want to peel him out of that suit and lick all his chest hair in the wrong direction.” He pauses, blinks wildly, and shudders. “Eurgh. Gross. Sorry about that. I did this Thirst Tweets thing for Buzzfeed the other week, and someone said that exact same thing about me, and I think I have, like, PTSD from it. Post Tweet Stress Disorder. It’s a real thing, Google it. Anyway, tell me right now, before he gets back! Who wants to bone Eddie? Who should I be watching out for?”

Jamie swallows hard. Next to him, Nishat starts to giggle. 

“Do not,” says Jamie, and Nishat bursts out laughing. 

Richie raises an eyebrow, a slow grin spreading across his face. “Jamie?” 

To his own credit, Jamie thinks, he says nothing at all. The effect is rather ruined, however, by the massive amount of blood rushing straight to his head, flushing his cheeks bright red.

“I mean,” says Nishat, spreading their arms in a matter-of-fact gesture. 

“Jamie!” crows Richie, reaching forward and cuffing him, blessedly gently, on the arm. Jamie can’t help noticing that Richie’s hands are quite large. “You sly old dog! You been making doll eyes at my guy, huh?”

“No!” cries Jamie. “Not even slightly. It’s not like that! I don’t—it’s not a crush,” he finishes, weakly.

“Babe,” says Nishat, and rests an arm on Jamie’s elbow. “I’m sorry, babe, but you totally have a big ol’ crush on Eddie Kaspbrak.”

“I do _not_ ,” says Jamie, trying very hard to sound like he’s telling God’s honest truth, because he is. “If anything, he’s like—like a work uncle. You know this! I told you!”

“But a work uncle by marriage,” says Nishat, “so you can still fuck. You were very specific about that.”

“Can we not talk about this right in front of his husband,” says Jamie, flatly, wondering what the probability is of Godzilla smashing right through John Candy’s stained glass face and crushing them all to death beneath his gigantic foot. Unfortunately rather low, he thinks. 

“You’re not,” says Richie. “You’re talking about it _with_ his husband. Totally different ballgame. And anyway, don’t worry about me feeling threatened.” He waves his left hand airily. “Not to shit in your cheesecake or anything, but all of our friends are, like, Hollywood hot. Crazy hot. The kind of hot where you’re like, please do not touch me, ever, because I _will_ get third degree burns, and I _will_ sue you, and I _will_ get plastic surgery to make myself 10% hotter with the proceeds. At best, you’re, like, Riverdale hot.” Jamie opens his mouth to protest, but Richie holds a hand up. “And that’s fine! That’s still hot! But what I mean is that if Eddie hasn’t already left me for, say, People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive 2018 Ben Hanscom, then he’s probably not gonna leave me for anyone.”

Over Richie’s shoulder, Jamie spies Eddie weaving his way through the ever-increasing crowds, making his way towards their little huddle. “Oh look, he’s coming back,” he says, relieved beyond measure that the second most humiliating conversation of his life can now end.

“I’ll put in a good word for you,” says Richie, winking, and Jamie feels himself flushing a colour that should not, biologically speaking, be possible. 

Eddie sets down a drink in front of Richie. “It’s beer, and no, I don’t know what kind, and no, I don’t give a fuck,” he says. “You can ask the dude at the bar when you go and pick up the other ones.”

Richie spreads a hand across his heart, and sighs. “My husband, the charmer,” he declaims, in the manner of a Southern belle, but he stands up anyway, ruffling Eddie’s hair and saluting Jamie and Nishat, and going off to collect the drinks that Eddie’s bought.

The atmosphere, with Richie gone, is stilted, to say the least. Eddie stares into the carbonation gathering around the top of Richie’s beer, and sighs. 

“Look,” he says, looking up at Nishat and then at Jamie. “I’m sorry if this is weird for you. Richie is—” He pauses, clearly unsure of how to finish the sentence. 

“He’s cool,” says Nishat. “He gets memes.”

“I have no idea what that means,” says Eddie. “And I was going to say that he’s on TV, and I don’t know, I had no idea how to explain that.”

“He’s cool,” echoes Jamie, because he’s not certain what else needs to be said. “I like him. He seems like he’d have no clue how to work the coffee machine either.”

Eddie huffs with laughter. “You have no idea,” he says, sounding relieved, so Jamie’s pretty sure he said the right thing. “He once flooded our house by putting washing up liquid in the dishwasher.”

Nishat grimaces. “And you didn’t immediately sell the story to TMZ?” they say. “Missed opportunity.”

It’s neat, Jamie thinks, seeing them get along like this. He hadn’t exactly anticipated it, had sort of imagined that Nishat would end up spending most of their time with Eddie’s husband, making small-talk, while he and Eddie huddled in a corner and awkwardly talked about Work, capital W implied, but it’s not like that at all. He hasn’t even so much as thought about the groaning pile of folders that need alphabetising tomorrow morning since he got here.

Richie returns with a small measure of what looks like more, darker whisky for Eddie, and two glasses of white wine for Jamie and Nishat. Jamie’s always been more of a red wine guy, even though red wine isn’t much of a Jamie guy, but he’s fine with white, and he takes it gladly.

“And the barman tells me that you didn’t even use my card,” Richie says to Eddie. “I’m onto you, Spagheds. I think you _like_ me.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, for what must be the seven-hundredth time this evening. “I have no idea what gave you that impression,” he says, and sips his drink.

* * *

Someone else commandeers their table some time later, and the four of them end up crowded against the bar, right in the middle of the throng of people. It’s not so loud that they can’t talk, thankfully, but Jamie can pick up on quite a few interminably dull conversations and the raucous laughter of several men making jokes about stocks and shares and women. Nishat, tipsy after a glass of champagne and a glass and a half of wine, is hugging Jamie’s middle, and he has his arm around them, holding his fourth glass of wine in his free hand. He hasn’t drunk this much since college, and he’s pretty sure that he’ll pay the price tomorrow, but whatever. He’s having fun.

“So anyway,” says Richie, cradling a glass of orange juice between both hands, having begged off any more alcohol on pain of a terrible hangover, proving himself, despite all initial appearances to the contrary, capable of making at least one sensible decision. “Who’s this Andrei dude who’s died or whatever?”

“He’s not dead,” answers Jamie. “Just moving to Gold & Brown.”

“That’s basically the same thing,” says Eddie, and Jamie has to resist the urge to high five him. 

“Well,” Richie asks, “what’s he like? Why are we celebrating him?”

Jamie shrugs. “I haven’t met him,” he says. 

“Me neither,” says Nishat, their words only very slightly slurred.

Jamie squeezes them a little, suddenly overwhelmed with a rush of disgusting, gooey love. 

“You haven’t met any of these people, love,” he says. 

Nishat pokes him in the side, very gently. “That’s not true, actually,” they say, indignant. “I met Mr Sideburns Man, didn’t I, and that man who looked like a big old frog?”

“Ah, Mr Harrison,” says Eddie, knowingly, and Nishat dissolves into giggles.

“But that’s not this Andrei dude, I’m guessing,” says Richie. 

Eddie drains his shot of whisky in one again and puts his glass down on the bar. “Nope.”

He doesn’t offer anything else about Andrei, and Richie shifts his glass to one hand, drums his fingers along Eddie’s shoulder, thoughtfully. 

“I’m getting the impression that you’re not going to be mourning his loss to Gold & Brown.”

“Well,” says Eddie. “I wouldn’t say I’m too fucking sad to see him go, no.”

“Why not?”

Eddie looks, for the first time in the four years that Jamie has known him, somewhat nervous. “No reason.”

“C’mon, Eds. You can tell us gossip gals. We won’t tell anyone else! We’ll take it to the grave. Probably in about four years’ time, in my case, thanks to my diet of ramen and fruit roll-ups. What do you have to lose?”

“No, really,” says Eddie. “It doesn’t matter. He’s fine, I guess.”

“Eddie,” says Richie. “Spagheddie. Edmund Hillary. Edward II of England. Thomas Eddieson. I have, in fact, met you, and I know when something doesn’t matter, and I can tell you that this matters to you. Like, a lot."

“Look,” begins Eddie, and then he sighs, slumping forwards, some of the high-strung energy coming out of him, and that, more than anything, notifies Jamie that something may, in fact, be wrong here. “Don’t throw a shit-fit, all right?”

“Literally name one time I’ve ever thrown a shit-fit, Eds. Shit-fits are way more your department.”

Eddie rests his chin on his hand, elbow propped on the bar, and raises an eyebrow expertly. “The time we were backstage at the Conan taping and one of the interns looked at my arm and made a joke about shark attacks in Maine, and you threatened to spend your entire Conan interview talking about the state of interns these days, and he cried.”

“OK,” says Richie, shrugging. “Name literally any other time.”

“When we went to Starbucks and that woman told me to wear a prosthetic so that I didn’t scare her kids, and you told her that her lipstick made her look like the clown who tried to eat you in a sewer once,” replies Eddie. “Are you seeing a pattern here?”

Richie nods solemnly. “That I’ll fight any boomer to the death if they so much as look at you funny, my dearest little bowl of tagliateddie.”

“Yeah, exactly.”

A sick feeling is growing in the pit of Jamie’s stomach as he begins to piece two and two together. He’s never been a fan of four.

Richie is clearly making the same connections, because he frowns. “Wait. Are you saying…?”

“What did I _just_ say about throwing a shit-fit?” interjects Eddie.

“What did he _do_?”

Eddie sighs deeply. “If I tell you, will you promise not to verbally eviscerate him at his own leaving party?”

“Eddie—”

“Promise, Rich. I really don’t want to cause a scene. I have to work with these chucklefucks after this.”

Richie purses his lips, but nods. “OK, fine. I swear on your mother that I won’t absolutely destroy him in front of all your coworkers on this, the day of his departure.”

“OK,” says Eddie, “now swear on something that you like.”

“Ouch,” says Richie. “You think I don’t like your mother? You think I could have spent that much time making sweet, tender love all the different ways to someone I didn’t _like_?”

“Richard,” says Eddie. 

“Edward,” says Richie. The two of them stare at one another for what feels to Jamie like eons, until Richie groans in frustration. “Fine!” he says, throwing both hands up and making the sign of the cross in front of himself. “I swear on Jesus Christ that I won’t.”

“You’re Jewish,” says Eddie, neutrally. 

“I still think Jesus was a super tight dude, though.”

“Richard Wentworth Tozier,” says Eddie. 

Richie sighs. “OK, fine. God. I swear on your dick that I won’t. Is that good enough?”

“I mean, I think that means you have to destroy my dick if you break your promise, so it’s good enough for me if you fucking keep your promise.”

“I’d never do that, Eds,” says Richie, very seriously. “You don’t take a knife to the Mona Lisa.”

Pressed up in a warm, pliant line alongside Jamie, Nishat starts shaking with suppressed laughter. 

“Fine. Fuck. All right.” Eddie bites his lower lip for a moment. “So there’s a very small chance that, uh, Andrei might have been the dude that the email was meant for.”

 _Shit_ , thinks Jamie. And now he understands why Eddie had looked so nervous at the start of this conversation.

Richie frowns. “What email?” he asks, and then, almost as soon as he’s asked the question, his face darkens. “The one that got the other dude fired? The one where he was a dick about your arm?”

“Yeah,” says Eddie. “The one and only.”

“Well, why the fuck didn’t they fire him, too?”

“Because Brad sent the email to everyone,” explains Eddie, “and he never used Andrei’s name in it. I only know it was meant for him because Andrei told me.”

Richie scoffs. “When did he tell you? And why? What an idiot.” 

Eddie shrugs. “Like two days ago, when he also told me some very uncomplimentary things that I won’t be repeating, presumably because he has nothing to lose at this point and might as well let me know exactly what he thinks,” he says, and then, at Richie’s angry face, he puts up a pacifying hand. “It’s actually fine. He’s leaving, I never have to see him again, we all win.”

“Babe,” says Richie. “Dude. It’s so not fine.” He turns to Jamie. “Do you think it’s fine?”

“Um,” says Jamie, not sure whether he should be siding with Eddie or Richie at this point, and choosing to just give his honest opinion instead. “Not really, no.”

“What a fucking dick,” says Nishat, who actually has no context for what email they’re all talking about or who Brad is, but evidently picks up that Andrei might, in fact, have been part of something quite fucked up.

“Speak of the fucking dick,” mutters Eddie, and Jamie follows Eddie’s line of sight, spotting a lean white dude with frosted tips—really, in 2020?—who’s wearing a very, very expensive suit, including a fuchsia pocket square, and carrying a half-empty bottle of Corona. 

“Is that him?” Nishat stage whispers, and Eddie, tight-lipped, nods.

Andrei lurches towards them, his countenance evidently not improved by the addition of weak beer, and Jamie is suddenly hit by the overwhelming scent of cologne.

“Hey,” says Andrei, belching around the insincere greeting. Jamie can tell from the scent that wafts out of his mouth, mingling unpleasantly with the cologne, that he’s already a good four beers deep. “Wassup, nerds? Great party, huh?”

Jamie has never actually met Andrei before, because he blessedly doesn’t have to deal with Sales very often, and, as of right now, he envies his past self that privilege.

“Like one of Gatsby’s greatest,” says Richie, voice flat.

Andrei nods, quite clearly either not getting the reference or not understanding that it isn’t a compliment, and then he does a double take. “Hey, Kaspbrak,” he says, apparently only just noticing that Eddie’s here. 

Eddie gives him a little wave, wiggling his fingers. “Andrew.” 

Beside Jamie, Nishat mutters, “ouch.”

“Ha,” says Andrei, taking another swig of beer and tottering backwards, just a bit. “Good one. It’s Andrei, man, you knew that.”

“Did I?”

“Well, yeah.” Andrei frowns. “I spoke to you, like, two days ago.”

“Guess it didn’t leave much of an impression,” says Eddie, not sounding even slightly apologetic.

“Huh,” says Andrei. Jamie’s beginning to get the idea that he is not, in fact, the most erudite man he’s ever met. Andrei turns to Richie, and gestures towards him with his beer bottle. “How do you know these nerds, dude? Thought you had a show tonight. My buddy Carl had tickets.”

Great, thinks Jamie. That’s another strike against Carl, if he’s friends with this douchewad. 

“Holy matrimony,” says Richie, and he wiggles his fingers, just like Eddie had a few moments ago, drawing attention to his wedding ring. He doesn’t explain the show cancellation, presumably because he’s here, so there’s quite obviously no show.

“What, to this piece right here?” says Andrei, tipping his beer bottle in the direction of Nishat, whose arms are still, quite clearly, wrapped around Jamie’s middle. “Nice.”

Jamie feels a flare of something hot burn in his chest. “Hey, man,” he begins, but Richie raises a hand, quelling the fight.

“Andrew,” he begins, and there’s something almost performative in his voice that Jamie hasn’t heard before, but Eddie quite clearly has, because he’s suddenly pursing his lips around a laugh. “Can I call you Andrew?”

“My name is Andrei, man, I just told you.”

“Andrew,” says Richie, again, and Eddie snorts. “For the record, if my dear husband here hadn’t asked me not to verbally eviscerate you about five seconds ago, I would tell you to your face just how much your haircut makes you look like a police composite of Justin Timberlake, or how your whiny, dudebro voice sounds like a mosquito without any of the charm, or how you have all the conversational wit of this bar right here, except the bar actually serves a purpose beyond being insufferable. I would tell you that your personality is so dull that holistic doctors hire you to send their patients to sleep, and that there’s so little going on in your brain that someone could stand you upright in front of a starry sky, stare into your left ear, and use you as a telescope. Unfortunately for me, I’m not allowed to say those things to you, so I won’t.” He smiles sweetly. “Would you like an autograph, or will that be all?”

Andrei blinks several times in rapid succession. “Uh, an autograph would be cool, I guess.”

 _Unbelievable_ , Jamie thinks. Some people just don’t know when to quit. 

Richie wordlessly reaches over to the stash of napkins on the bar, pulls a marker pen out of his jacket pocket—Jamie presumes he keeps one on hand for situations just like this—and signs something on a napkin, caps the pen, and hands the napkin to Andrei. 

“Thanks, man,” says Andrei, taking the napkin. He looks down at it, and, after a brief moment of silent confusion, frowns. “Does that say Tenzing Norgay?” 

“It sure does,” replies Richie, grinning wolfishly. “I’ve dotted the ‘i’ with a little heart, and everything. Just for you.” 

“It, uh,” says Andrei, “it says ‘to Andrew’.”

“The man I wish I’d met,” says Richie, sagely. “Good luck at Gold & Brown, by the way. Got hired there to do a stand-up gig for the head honcho’s birthday last year. Cool dude, that Mr Gold. He bought me a car for Christmas. I can’t wait to find out all about you from him.”

Some people have entirely too much money, thinks Jamie.

“Are you,” Andrei starts, and then frowns. “Wait. Are you Kaspbrak’s husband?”

“No,” says Richie. “He’s mine.”

Andrei swallows hard then, and Jamie watches the bob of his Adam’s apple in his throat. 

“Look, man,” says Andrei to Eddie. “No hard feelings, OK? What I said to you the other day—just joking, you know, two bros.”

“I really don’t remember a word you said to me,” says Eddie, blandly. “I’m sure I’ll forget this conversation in a few minutes, too. I tend to try not to remember things I don’t give a shit about.” He turns to look up at Richie, effectively cutting Andrei out of the conversation. “You want another drink?”

“Absolutely,” says Richie, beaming. “I’ll buy.”

“I’ll come with,” says Eddie, and he makes meaningful eye contact with Jamie.

“Me too,” says Jamie, and, pulling Nishat along with him, the four of them leave Andrei behind, mouth flapping like a fish.

They only walk a few feet away, but it’s enough; if anything, it’s a more blatant brush-off, now that Andrei can see that they’re still here but choosing to ignore him, and Jamie is, for a moment, kind of regretful that he won’t get to rub this in Andrei’s face later.

“That,” says Nishat, “was awesome.”

Richie flaps his hand dismissively. “Aw, hell,” he says, but doesn’t disagree with their analysis. 

“I thought I told you not to verbally eviscerate him,” says Eddie, but he doesn’t look even slightly irritated. In fact, he’s smiling softly; the intimacy of his gaze almost makes Jamie want to look away, as though he’s intruding. 

“I didn’t, babe,” says Richie. “I just told him what I _would_ say to him. I think I was pretty polite, considering I wanted to snap him in half like a twig and use him to stir my drink.”

“I wouldn’t,” says Eddie. “You don’t know where he’s been.”

Richie snorts, and puts his arm around Eddie again, squeezing. “Eds gets off yet another zinger. Why are you so much funnier than me, babe? Save some material for me. It’s only fair.” 

“Are you really friends with Benjamin Gold?” asks Eddie. 

Richie shrugs. “Yeah,” he says. “Dude absolutely loves potty humour, apparently. Hung around and got drunk with him after my set. Got on like a house on fire. Not sure I’d want to be in Andrei’s shoes right about now.”

“Have I told you lately that I love you?” says Eddie. 

“I could always stand to hear it more,” says Richie.

“These guys fucking _rock_ ,” whispers Nishat, and Jamie couldn’t agree more.

* * *

Jamie nips outside for a breath of fresh air after his fourth glass of wine, hoping that the cold might sober him up a bit. It doesn’t, as it happens, but it’s still quite nice to be away from the bustle of people and noise. Richie comes with him, muttering something about twinks who can’t hold their drinks, and the two of them stand outside, leaning against the side of Studio 52’s whitewashed walls. 

He feels… he doesn’t know how he feels. Giggly, from the wine, and euphoric, and that might only half be the fault of the wine.

“I appreciate you coming,” says Jamie. The alcohol has worked its way through his system thoroughly now, left him feeling warm and mellow and sort of tingly, in that way you get when you sleep on your leg and then wake up and realise that you’ve cut the blood supply off to your own foot. “I know you didn’t want to be here, at, like, Corporate Land, but it’s been fool.” He frowns, sounds the words out on his tongue. “Fun. Cool. Both of those things.”

“Oh,” says Richie, and then realisation dawns on his face, eyes widening. “ _Oh_. No. No, no. I, uh. I actually fucking jumped at the chance as soon as Eddie told me about it. Are you kidding? I’ve been waiting for this invite for _years_. He’s always been, like, super wary of me hanging around him at these fancy-ass events.”

None of this makes sense to Jamie. Eddie had said, hadn’t he, that he’d have to convince Richie to come here? Jamie didn’t dream that. Jamie _did_ dream that he was being served perfectly poached eggs by a man who looked a lot like Chris Evans in Eddie’s kitchen, but he didn’t dream that he and Eddie were in this together, trying to convince their anti-corporate partners to come to this stupid event.

“Why would Eddie not want you here?” Jamie asks, slowly, settling on the smallest fraction of the gigantic, unfathomable mess of questions that’s tying itself into a great big woolly knot inside his brain.

“Probably because I’m kind of an embarrassing person, honestly,” answers Richie, after a few moments. “Like, I have absolutely zero brain-to-mouth filter, and I swear every other sentence—and yeah, so does Eddie when he’s not at work, but he can turn it off, and I can’t—and I’m super good at, like, making an absolute idiot of myself, and also of Eddie, and sometimes I wish I could just be all—” he stops, clearly searching for the right word. “—shiny. Put together. You know what I mean?”

“Shiny,” repeats Jamie, remembering a conversation he’d had with Eddie a couple of days ago, and starting to join a few dots in his brain that he’s not entirely sure he wants to join. 

“Yeah. So like, when Eddie actually told me about this dumb party, and didn’t seem totally opposed to the idea of me hanging off his arm the entire time, I was like, yes! I’ll come! I’ll probably talk about my dick way too much, but you want me there, I’m _there_.”

“So, you _asked_ to come,” clarifies Jamie. 

“Yep,” says Richie, popping the ‘p’. “Basically begged him on bended knee. It was like proposing all over again, except with more clothes.” He stops, then smacks himself lightly in the forehead with the heel of his palm. “Ugh. See? That’s what I mean. I say shit like that. All the time. I can’t _not_ say it.”

“It’s just that Eddie and I had a deal,” Jamie continues, slowly. “Where I told him that I wanted to come to this dumb party but I didn’t think I’d be able to get Nishat on board, because Nishat is, like, basically a communist. Eddie told me that he had a hard time convincing you to come to these things as well, so we agreed that if I could persuade Nishat to come, then he’d do his best to get you to come as well, and that’s what we did. Or at least I thought that was what we did.”

Richie says nothing for a solid five seconds. “Ah.”

“So he lied to me, basically, so that I’d talk Nishat into coming.”

“Well, why did you want Nishat here?” asks Richie.

Jamie exhales. “Because it was a total pain in the ass having, like, two separate spheres of my life, and I wanted to show Nishat what my work was actually like, so that it felt like I was living one whole life and not two halves of one.”

“And you told Eddie that.”

“Yeah.”

Richie spreads his hands like he’s just solved the Sphinx’s riddle. “Well, that’s why, then.”

“I don’t get it,” says Jamie, blinking. “Why did he lie to me? He could have just _told_ me that you wanted to come, and that I was the only one whose partner never wanted to go to these stupid things, and they _are_ stupid things, anyway, and Nishat’s way better at them than I am, as it turns out, so why did Eddie—”

“Listen, mon ami,” says Richie, leaning in and lowering his voice a little. “Don’t tell anyone I told you this, especially not Eddie, because he _will_ threaten to sleep on the couch for a week, and he won’t follow through on it because he’s an absolute bitch for seven hundred thread count sheets, but still, he’ll whine and it’ll be a whole thing. But look. Eds is a total goddamn softie.”

Jamie thinks of Eddie’s emails, their Arial fonts and ‘Regards’, of the time he’d shouted about Brad’s mom’s asshole. Of all the words he could think of to describe Eddie Kaspbrak, ‘softie’ isn’t even in the top 3,000. 

Some of his suspicion must show on his face, because Richie holds both hands up in a gesture of surrender. “I’m not kidding,” he says. “I know he’s, like, Mr Shoutathon 2020, and he has this perpetual little frown on his face, which is objectively incredibly cute, might I add, but underneath those washboard abs and that honestly breathtaking pectoral definition, Eds has a heart of melted butter. He’d pretty much do anything for anyone, as long as it was mostly legal and he could wash his hand thoroughly afterwards. And trust me, if you told him that you really wanted Nishat to be here, and that the only way you could get Nishat to come here was if I was here too, and if he knew that you felt kind of sore about having to persuade Nishat to come, then he’d absolutely try and make you feel better about it by telling you that he had to beg me to come here too. You get it?”

Jamie blinks. “No.”

Richie rolls his eyes. “Dude,” he says. “Eddie told me you were, like, this wunderkind. You’re meant to be smart. How are you not getting this?”

All Jamie can think is: _Eddie told you I was clever_?

“I just wish he hadn’t made it all up. I thought that it was something we had in common,” he says, and he’s aware that he sounds like a needy little brat now, but whatever. “And now we don’t even have that!”

“Jesus H Christ on a fucking Christmas cake,” says Richie. “You know what you two do have in common? You’re both neurotic as fuck. Kids these days, honestly. You know how I made friends with Eds, back when he still wore two fanny packs like he was holstering the world’s lamest guns? I literally walked up to him in the playground, stuck my hand out, and told him that we were friends, and then I pushed him into the sandpit. And it fucking worked. God. Just tell him you want to be his friend, and stop _pining_ , oh my God. You’re worse than me between the years of 1985 and 2016.”

Jamie stares at him. “That’s like, thirty years, dude.”

“Yeah, OK. Maybe you’re not worse than me. But still. Totally pining. Cut it out.” Richie clasps him on the shoulder with one big hand and shakes him, very gently. “He told a little lie so that you’d feel better. What does that tell you?”

And because Jamie doesn’t have a hope in hell of shaking off Richie’s hand, he actually thinks about it. Turns the concept over in his brain, examines it from every angle he possibly can. 

Eddie lied to him. That blows. But Eddie lied _for_ him, too, and that’s harder to understand. Jamie isn’t a fan of lying in general, if he’s honest, and he kind of resents the fact that he’s being forced to accept that this lie in particular is fine. 

But then again, he imagines what he would have done, had Eddie told him that his husband, unlike Nishat, wanted to come. And Jamie knows, in a heartbeat, that he would have chickened out of asking Nishat here. He would have balked at the prospect of being the only one with a reluctant plus-one, and so he wouldn’t have brought anyone, and he would have sat in a corner, glumly nursing a bottle of lukewarm piss-beer, watching Eddie rub shoulders with Top Frog and Sideburns, and he never would have got to see Nishat play corporate chess and absolutely revel in it, or have met Richie, even though he’s kind of being a big-handed jerk right now, and he never would have got to see the way that Eddie rolls his eyes and calls Richie a fuckwad. And Eddie knew all that. Eddie knew what he would be missing out on, if he didn’t find a way to convince Nishat to come, and so Eddie lied to him. For him. Whatever.

Eddie did him a solid, the kind that you only do for people you _like_.

“He likes me,” says Jamie, wonderingly, and Richie sighs.

“I shouldn’t be so happy that another man has finally figured out that my husband likes him,” he says. “And yet, somehow, I’m ecstatic. Maybe you’ll even let me be bridesmaid, shower you in flowers or some shit. Come on, man. Let’s get you inside.”

The rest of the night is a total blur of beer and bad jokes and Nishat buttering up Jamie’s various coworkers, and Eddie frowning and laughing, sometimes both at once. Jamie’s pretty sure he gets up on a table and dances to _Livin’ La Vida Loca_ with Richie at one point, but to hell with it. He’s only youngish once.

When he and Nishat get home, they crash into bed, not even bothering to take off their clothes or crawl under the sheets. Jamie reaches out and touches Nishat’s cheek, right under their eye.

“Ow,” they say, and grin. “Hi. Good night?”

“The best,” Jamie says, and means it.

* * *

When Jamie gets into the office on Friday morning, he’s just about recovered from his hangover. He almost feels human, which he definitely didn’t yesterday, so he’s made a lot of progress. He spent most of yesterday, which he’d taken off as his first ever sick day, seeing light in a spectrum hitherto undiscovered and wondering whether someone had secretly carpeted the inside of his mouth without him realising, so frankly, the fact that he’s upright and sentient is a miracle.

And he knows what he needs to do, which is another kind of progress entirely. 

He spends the entirety of the elevator ride up to the seventh floor chewing over what he’s going to say. He has to be subtle about it, he knows. Play it cool. He can’t show all his cards at once, or Eddie might deck him, which is a joke that Richie told at some point on Wednesday night and Jamie had immediately committed to memory.

The elevator arrives all too soon at Jamie’s floor, and he’s still mulling over his perfect, articulate phrasing when he passes Carl.

“Morning,” says Carl. “Have a good time on Wednesday night?”

“Andrei’s a _dick_ , Carl,” says Jamie, pushing past him, and then, feeling a little bad, adds, “and yes, thank you, did you?”

Carl mumbles something blandly affirmative, and Jamie gives him a lacklustre thumbs up, heading in the direction he needs to go.

He crashes into Eddie’s office, pushing the door open without even so much as a cursory knock, and stumbles inside. 

“Are we friends?” he blurts out.

Eddie, who’s sitting at his desk, as always, turns around and fixes him with a bemused stare.

“Good morning,” says Eddie. “Do you want a coffee? I know I need one.”

Jamie opens his mouth, then closes it again. “No. Thank you.”

“Right,” says Eddie, and then stands up, presumably heading out to get coffee. 

“Hang on,” says Jamie. “I just—”

“—Richie’s told me to ask you and Nishat over for dinner next Friday,” says Eddie. “I’d like you to come. Richie’s cooking is horrible, and it’ll be nice to have someone else to palm it off on. You in?”

He grins at Jamie then, and Jamie feels something bright and brilliant burn inside him.

“Absolutely, we’re in!” he says, trying hard not to gush like the heroine in a Georgette Heyer novel and not entirely succeeding. “That sounds great! See you Friday!”

“I’ll see you in half an hour for the briefing on the Vortex Solutions contract,” says Eddie, but he's smiling in that exasperated way of his, and Jamie knows that what he’s really saying is _see you then, best friend._

Jamie can’t wait. He’s going to bring so much brioche.

“Looking forward to it,” he says, and he is.

**Author's Note:**

> And it's done! I apologise in advance for any errors; I did, in fact, proof read it in its entirety, and then my computer crashed and did not save so much as a bean of my edits, and so I wept full sore for about a century and redid them all with a very heavy heart, and so some mistakes may have remained purely due to my dwindling sanity.
> 
> Thanks everyone for your patience!


End file.
